Graphics Cards

Over the past few months we have looked at several Sapphire graphics cards including the Radeon HD 4670, Radeon HD 4850 Toxic, Radeon HD 4870, and Radeon HD 4870 Toxic Vapor-X. All of these cards have performed quite well on Linux with the Catalyst Linux driver and there is even open-source support for these R700 series graphics cards, except that goes without any hardware acceleration at this time. The graphics cards introduced up to this point though haven't exactly been cheap, but ATI has now introduced their low-end graphics cards for the Radeon HD 4000 series. With Sapphire being a key ATI partner, they have of course introduced news models accordingly. What we have our hands on today is the Sapphire Radeon HD 4550 512MB, which is a PCI Express graphics card that retails for a mere $50~60 USD.

The ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card arrived back in June with same-day Linux support through the Catalyst driver and there was even open-source mode-setting support. We have been very pleased with the level of Linux support for the Radeon HD 4000 series and it continues with features such as UVD2 and XvMC out on the horizon. With a few months having passed since the release of the Radeon HD 4870, we are starting to see more innovative RV770 products from ATI's partners. In August we looked at the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic, which was a factory-overclocked Radeon HD 4850. Today we are looking at the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic, which takes the original Radeon HD 4870 to the next level with heightened frequencies and an exclusive Vapor-X cooling solution.

Back in March we looked at the AMD Radeon HD 3200 graphics with AMD's 780G Chipset and found it to be a reputable performer. Its performance was almost identical to that of the discrete Radeon HD 2400PRO graphics card and was capable of running some Linux games at a playable frame-rate. Now though AMD's top-end IGP is 790GX Chipset with Radeon HD 3300 graphics. We have been testing an AMD 790GX motherboard from Elitegroup Computer Systems for the past several weeks and today we are delivering our Linux benchmarks of this newest AMD integrated graphics processor.

Earlier this month the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series from AMD was unveiled as the new mid-range graphics cards derived from their flagship RV770 graphics core. The Radeon HD 4650 and Radeon HD 4670 are the two RV730-based products now available. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 may not be able to compete with the Radeon HD 4800 series in all of the tests, but at a price of under $100 USD is it worth pursuing? For this article we have our hands on the brand new Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB graphics card as we test it on Ubuntu Linux to see how well it can perform in our OpenGL tests and overclock with the recently added OverDrive support.

Earlier this week with the release of the Catalyst 8.8 driver we were first to deliver Linux CrossFire benchmarks for the Radeon HD 4800 series along with the first OverDrive for Linux article. With our initial CrossFire for Linux article we had delivered benchmarks from the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870, now though we are delivering the first Radeon HD 4870 X2 benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux. In this article we have our hands on the VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB graphics card.

Back in June we had exclusively shared that CrossFire would be coming to Linux as part of their Radeon HD 4800 series strategy. CrossFire (or CrossFire X as it's now known) allows the graphics rendering workload to be split between multiple Radeon GPUs to deliver faster performance. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's multi-GPU technology known as SLI (Scalable Link Interface) has been supported on Linux since 2005. While AMD is still working to address some issues with their ATI Linux driver, they have been working hard on new features like CrossFire. How does this feature work though on Linux and does it deliver similar performance gains to their Windows driver? Today we have a full rundown on ATI CrossFire for Linux along with benchmarks from the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870.

While details on AMD's high-end ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card began surfacing last month, today this dual-GPU graphics card has formally launched and will begin shipping to retailers. The good news this time around is that this graphics card will actually be something worth looking at under Linux now that there's the needed CrossFire support on the horizon. We're not yet permitted to publish the Linux CrossFire benchmarks, but today we have a few pieces of information to share about the Radeon HD 4870 X2 on Linux.

Back in June we were first to deliver Radeon HD 4850 benchmarks on Linux just after the new high-end ATI/AMD GPUs were launched. We were also successful in using the Radeon HD 4850 with an open-source driver and had exclusively shared that CrossFire support is coming to Linux along with a horde of other improvements. These new Linux features are coming soon, but today we are looking at a new Radeon HD 4850 graphics card from Sapphire Technology. The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic 512MB ships with a performance-oriented Zalman cooler and it also comes factory overclocked.

Earlier this month Intel had announced the GMA X4500 series, which is their latest and greatest when it comes to integrated graphics processors. These IGPs were greeted by same-day Linux support (it had actually arrived before the chipset was announced), but it's still next to impossible to find motherboards using the G43 and G45 Chipsets that bear this IGP. Fortunately, however, our friends at Super Micro have come through and we have managed to get our hands on the C2SEA. The Super Micro C2SEA is an ATX motherboard that uses the Intel G45 Chipset in conjunction with an ICH10 Southbridge. This motherboard provides Intel GMA X4500HD graphics with VGA and HDMI interfaces. In this article, we are looking at the performance of this new Intel graphics processor under Linux.

When AMD had unveiled the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 last month, NVIDIA was left in an awkward position. The Radeon HD 4850 had sharply outperformed the (more expensive, at the time) GeForce 9800GTX, which led NVIDIA to immediately begin slashing prices and introducing a slightly faster GeForce 9800GTX+ that ramped up the memory and core frequencies. ATI's flagship Radeon HD 4870 also had no problems competing with the more-expensive GeForce GTX 260 / 280. Many of NVIDIA's partners as a result have slashed their prices on their earlier GeForce 8 and 9 products. One of the NVIDIA products that was previously considered a good budget graphics card was the GeForce 8800GT, but now how does it stand up against the latest from ATI and NVIDIA? In this article we are looking at the ECS GeForce 8800GT. What is particularly special about this card and some of the other newer models shipping the GeForce 8800GT GPU is a BIOS revision that should yield a performance increase.